Some of this has to do with raw “quality control”, for which the SkillSet accreditation scheme will help. But, largely, it comes from a huge disconnect between the academic world and industry. Partially due to developers’ aloofness when it comes to academic collaboration; partially due to academia not even bothering to check in (ie, to get context/relevance, guidance, etc).

In that regard, I’m happy to see that pixel-lab is organizing another edition of GAMES:EDU to take place alongside the Develop conference in Brighton at the end of July. This will be the third EDU event I attend. It is an important/rare opportunity for industry to connect with academia. And while the set lectures/panels are great, the most enlightening part has always been when attendees get around the table to discuss specific issues among themselves.

Admittedly, the IGDA has not done as much as it should to better reach out to UK/Euro educators. We’ve had a lot of success in North America, but need to bring some of our EdSIG pixie dust abroad. I’ll be sure to bring a pouch of it to Brighton ;)

This largely has to do with the format change: from the all-in-one game biz mecca, to the much more scaled down showcase for publishers.

I went last year to Santa Monica, and had a tough time squeezing value out of the new format. Admittedly, being a non-profit association executive, I’m not exactly part of the target market. But, therein lies the beauty of the old “big” approach. which enabled all kinds of symbiotic stuff to evolve…

Not saying big is necessarily better, but big is different.

As noted at the start of the piece, it is easy to get caught up in all the negative stuff, working to fix problems and so on. We rarely do take the time to see the positive.

Happily, my small contribution to balance things was appreciated by a least a few folks, as noted in the comments section, for example:

…reading articles like this make me smile and when I feel good about the games industry I feel good about me…

Nice :)

By all counts Paris GDC was a success, with packed rooms and many good sessions. As it turns out, trying to co-locate with Game Connection in Lyon last year was too great a distraction/conflict for all the biz dev that usually goes on. Whereas, running solo in Paris during the lovely summer season seemed to be the right choice.

Several of the sessions were repeats from the main GDC earlier this year. But, since I don’t actually get to attend many sessions while in San Francisco, it was a nice chance to catch up. That said, of course, there were also many new and specifically tailored sessions - including some given in French - big surprise!

Sadly, the publisher<>developer debate session I was suppose to moderate fell through. No publisher was willing to duke it out with Bill Dugan (Torpex), and so the organizers relegated to an updated version of Bill’s Leadership Forum talk on external producers.

Given that I stayed in Paris for an extra week, timing worked out great as IGDA-Paris was having a chapter meeting the day before I had to leave. As always, very cool to see how IGDA chapters from around the world operate, their vibe, etc. (In case you were wondering, my wife was asleep early that night after an exhausting week of playing tourist - so she didn’t mind me going out solo for this bit of work action).

Anyway, on to some photos:

The opening VIP reception, on a lovely terrace with views of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower at night.

Paris GDC was held in the La Defense biz/tech area on the outskirts of Paris.

Ralph Baer recounting the start of our industry.

Mark Healey and Alex Evans impressively present their keynote from within their game, LittleBigPlanet.

Jurie Horneman packed the room to discuss team productivity.

Chris Kline (2k Boston) gives a revised version of his BioShock postmortem (which he first presented at IGDA-Montreal).

Chris building the courage to wrestle with giant slugs (aka escargots)…

Kim Pallister (Intel), Amanda Mae Miller (Think Services) and Martin (2K Australia) chow down on more standard foods.

John Nash (Blitz Games) gives an excellent talk on the value of training (and investing in) staff.

Jamil Moledina (Think Services) drills Rob Pardo on all things Blizzard…

French developers start to arrive/mingle at the bar for the IGDA-Paris chapter meeting.

Renowned French developer Olivier Lejade recounts his colorful history in game development…

…much to the pleasure of the larger-than-expected audience.

The bug “U” word has come up again, this time floated by design legend Ron Gilbert during a Gamasutra interview. He mentions that if the industry moves to a more “floating freelance” structure, union type glue will be needed. To elaborate on his reservation, here are my personal thoughts on why unions - as traditionally structured - will have a hard time taking hold in game development:

• Culture Mismatch: Generally speaking unions are a tool for leveling/equalizing labor, which is a direct mismatch with the game industry’s meritocracy oriented culture. Further, unions have traditionally just not done well in tech and knowledge based sectors.
• Lack of Standards: As noted by Gilbert, tech is still moving fast. Meaning, there are no standards the same way that the majority of movies are made with the same types of cameras, etc. And, it is not just a tech issue, but all kinds of standards: job titles, job roles, processes, pipelines, file formats, engines, platforms, etc, etc. Unions generally operate in an environment of very precise/predictable standards.
• Poor Process: Despite lots of progress on the project management front, overall, game production processes are still evolving heavily. At noted by Gilbert, a Hollywood per-project approach would require developers to be a whole lot better at scheduling, resource management, etc.
• Wrong Time Span: Ok, this one is more about the Hollywood process than unions per se… But, large scale games still take too long to develop, making it tough to assemble talent on the fly (”hey, I need you for a gig up in Wisconsin for the next 18 months, cool?”) As side note, this is also why some of the state-based government tax incentives modeled after a Hollywood production model have not attracted much action…
• Hotspot/Geographic Proximity: Traditional unions are mostly based on physical locations (think the big Ford manufacturing plant in Detroit) with the specific workers in that specific location/office being unionized. The Hollywood guild system works differently since it is a freelance workforce, but even that relies heavily on the physical proximity and clustering of projects and talent (ie, that’s why Hollywood is in Hollywood).

Anyway, those are some quick thoughts on the topic. Note that these bullets are “neutral” in that I’m not saying if unions are good or bad or useful for game development (that’s another post for another day). Rather, I’m just stating some factors as to why I personally believe unions/guilds will have a hard time taking hold in the game industry.

And, BTW, there’s totally something insightful to say in linking this to the recent news about Ken Levine renegotiating his contract with Take-Two. But hey, I’m on vacation, so I’ll let you figure it out!

I had heard a few whisperings about ESHRA over the years, but really didn’t know much. And, a web search doesn’t turn up any info. Turns out that they are not so much trying to be a secret society, as they are just super busy folks without techy/webby skills… Putting a web page is on the top of their to-do list!

While my presentation was somewhat big-picture industry structure and economics oriented, the opening session by Brent Ross of the Great Place to Work Institute was very specific on, well, being a great place work. Brent discussed a framework that included components on credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. He noted that the question that correlates most highly with a great place to work is: “Does management have a sincere interest in me as a person outside of work?” Hmm…

He also gave plenty of examples, discussed quality of life, and covered reasons to justify being a great place to work (eg, better financial performance, lower turnover, etc).

Sadly, when it came time for the roundtable discussions, I was asked to leave the room - being the only non-HR (and non-member) in the room. It was the right thing to do, but I was hoping to get some inside juice on HR issues…

Not surprisingly, the majority of attendees were women (probably 55 out of the 60 or so there). And, in talking with several HR directors, you really did get the sense that they view themselves as den mothers to their crazy pack of game developers (one even had “Wendy to the Lost Boys” on her business card). From that, also comes this deep sense of caring and concern, and the pride that they are an integral part of the process - even if they are often not viewed with the same respect/recognition as production by most folks.

Oh, and some of them drink a lot…

Anyway, was an eye-opening and valuable experience that I feel very fortunate to have had - and survived. I joked with them, saying that I feared they were going to shoot me now that I had seen all their faces ;)

The event was hosted at the main EA campus in Redwood City, CA

Brent Ross outlines the Trust Index framework

Inside EA

Beach volleyball, basketball courts and kiddie park all active during lunch

HR folks heading back to class, across the lovely EA grounds

I was going to whip up a more thorough brain dump, but looks like Tadhg Kelly beat me to the punch via his opinion piece at Gamasutra). I very much like Tadhg’s dissection of the issues - though he’s a tad more colorful than needed (and attracted the ire of several commenters). Like Tadhg, I’m not buying their “forces quality” argument.

Something Tadhg doesn’t really touch on is how MS usually boasts about their unusually high conversion rates (for many of the titles) as part of their pitch to win/attract content to XBLA. Perhaps culling the duds allows them to artificially keep boasting…

While in town, I took the opportunity to hook up with Heather Kelley, who has been a “visiting” professor at Carnegie Mellon over the past semester. It was a crazy art show week in Pittsburgh and Heather took me around to a few shows and related events. Also, I gave a lecture at the 8-Bit Poet Collective (a student group at CMU promoting indie game development).

Here are some photos from the trip:

Drew Davidson (CMU ETC) welcomes the SIGGRAPH committee members to the Entertainment Technology Center.

ETC student project Quasi.

The “lobby” area to the ETC.

Must be a lot of Star Wars nerds at the ETC…

University of Pittsburgh’s “tower of knowledge”, the tallest university building in the world (or so I was told by the taxi driver).

Playing some dodgeball after the 8-Bit Poet meeting.

Checked out the I-am-a-Heather art show at Future Tenant. Heather Kelley had an interactive/game piece.

A larger scale piece at the Pittsburgh Biennial art show.

More standard photos on a wall art at the Biennial.

Heather rides the rocket chair!

For example, in working to get all the achievement points in Assassin’s Creed, I spent some extra time just running around the cities and climbing all the high point towers. Since that involves no violence/etc, I allowed my son to watch me play (as a side note it was actually educational as we talked about the time period and the types of houses/buildings, and the fact there were no cars, etc).

Anyway, a few weeks later, out of the blue, he drew me the below rendition of Altair at the top of a tower and the two carts of hay to jump into.

• attending and moderating a session during “Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames” at Penn State University
• having dinner with new board chair Jen MacLean to discuss org strategy
• visiting the IGDA admin office in New Jersey to work on various operational stuffs, including a finance session with IGDA treasurer Tobi Saulnier
• dinner with the IGDA-Philly chapter coordinators
• attending and speaking at the IGDA-Philly chapter meeting

On the whole, a very productive, albeit exhausting week. Especially given late night college-style partying that took place during the Penn conference… But, I digress.

The Playing to Win conference was a good first effort, and really got going with a bang. The first several sessions focused on the “social” element of the conference sub-title, and featured some high-powered speakers. Though, after that initial set of sessions, many of the following panels lacked the same focus and firepower - though, there was certainly many nuggets of goodness interspersed. Would be excellent to see them focus solely on these “social” elements in the future.

Also, it was a real pleasure to finally meet GamePolitics’ Dennis McCauley, who was there to speak from the gamer’s perspective.

Presenting at the IGDA-Philly night a few days later was a treat, as I always appreciate the opportunity to sample different chapter cultures and styles. The meeting was well run and there was a good ~50 person crowd on hand. My lecture was a rehash of the “at least 10 reasons the game industry doesn’t suck” lecture I’ve done a few times before.

Anyway, here are some photos from the trip:

David Bickham (Center on Media and Child Health) gives a somewhat balanced opening keynote.

An amped up Clay Calvert (Penn State) gives a legal rundown on anti-game legislation failures.

Dennis McCauley (GamePolitics.com) presents the consumer perspective.

Adam Thierer (Center for Digital Media Freedom, The Progress & Freedom Foundation) discusses the role of parents.

Stevan Mitchell (ESA) covering the ESA’s roadmap for fighting piracy.

Amusingly, a “genuine software?” warning popped up during Stevan’s talk (it was a conference system, not his).

Jen McNamara (Breakaway Games) presents Pulse! as an example of the power of games for serious applications.

Brian Smith (Penn State) talks about fantasy sports leagues, a wildly successful form of digital games.

Jen MacLean (38 Studios) does a wonderful job of wrapping together all the disparate threads of the conference into her closing keynote.

John Demos (Three Rings Design), Jen MacLean (38 Studios) and Jason Coleman (Big Huge Games) out for some college-style partying in State College, PA!

The surprisingly good cover band, Spider Kelly, in action.

IGDA-Philly coordinator Daniel Hettrick munching some pre-meeting pizza with Steve Lane (U. of Penn).

Daniel kicks off the meeting.

Corvus Elrod (Zakelro Story Studio) gives a session on self-promotion.

Tom Bennett (Drexel University) and Vance Souders (Firewater Games) chowing down after the chapter meeting.

Alex Horn (Comcast) and Colin Campbell (Big Huge Games) at the post meeting watering whole.